The Bagnard and the Bohemian
by Saboteuse
Summary: Tagline: "My husband is in hell. Yet he is on this earth." Standalone--might expand, if requested. A day in the life of Javert’s parents--before he was born.
1. Fifika

The crystal ball is murky. I peer into and forget, for a moment, that I am supposed to be asking it to spread out before me the future of my client; I gaze into its distorted, bulbous roundness and look instead for some answer about my husband. _Tell me, gods, what must I do? When will my husband be freed from this torture? _My eyes are trained to find the response, but it does not come. I see no answer.

"And Anatole?" my client demands.

I must become once more the gypsy witch she has come to see, the Mme. Fifika Jacquot of my wooden sign. _Fortunes Told._ My name _is_ Fifika, and I do tell fortunes, and I am _Madame_––but not the one is says. It says Jacquot because I am and always will be the daughter of my mother; but as _Madame_, I am Javert. My husband is in hell; yet he is on this earth. It is a riddle easily solved by any who have passed within the gates of the bagne of Toulon.

I return to my ball. I send out the tentacles of my heart, or try to. I try to grasp something––if the gods will not help me, perhaps they will answer a question asked on her account. She is young, fresh, untainted. And she is in love. I fancy I see a flash of something positive in the crystal's dimensions; it lights up hot.

"I see a good sign," I say at last. "Anatole loves you. Don't worry about marriage yet. There are good things on the horizon, but they are not fully formed."

"Look deeper," she says eagerly.

I do. But as I press, I feel the walls of resistance that the crystal pushes against me. The future can only be penetrated so far.

"I cannot," I tell her.

She puts a handful of coins on the table. "Read my tarot, then."

I take her money and wrap it in the scarf I keep tucked inside my bodice. I know the type. If the cards do not satisfy her, she will ask for the tea leaves. Most girls like to start with a palm reading, but she wanted the purity of crystal. The openness, the blankness and potential. I know how she feels.

My hair falls in clumps from my headband and bothers my sight. I brush it away and infuse my voice with as much mystery as I can. "Tell me your question, my child."

She pauses and I can see her trying to frame it. "What will happen...to me and Anatole?"

I pull a spread of eight. I scan the first seven and skip to the last––the one that represents the outcome of their love. The World. Wholeness, harmony, perfection, a happy ending. And the first card––this one represents my client––is the Fool. She was young, she was worried, but she didn't need to be. The other six might portend something bad, but I don't want to look. And did they matter? They are simply icons for illusion and delusion, obstacles and strengths, perceptions and representations.

"He may marry you," I say simply. She throws down a gold louis, thanks me wildly, and runs from my tent. I add the louis to my scarf and look down at the cards I have drawn, wishing with all of the pulsing of my heart that they were mine. I want the World too. The Fool card stares up at me and suddenly I see through all of its trappings of blithe fortune––I look at it at face value, and what I see is a particolored man. I know who I see. My husband, my bird in a cage. I pick up the card and my lips touch it briefly. Night is falling fast. I look around; there are no more customers, not even the couples who come tripping in at evening, like moths to the lamp of my tent. I look at the billowing leaden sky and see why. I dismantle my tent, fold my crystal ball into the center, and place all in my knapsack, which I fill with my cards, candles, drapes, and my copper tea kettle. I remove my leather _nécessaire,_ already stuffed with matches, files, picks, and string, and secret my cleavage-money inside––all but the louis, which I leave in the scarf.

The louis should be enough. I pray to the powers that it is enough. I never know what fiendish _argousins_ may be lurking within, barring my way to the common room. A sheet of rain falls from the grey clouds in the distance, to a charged whisper of thunder that resonates off the far cliffs on the beach; saluting the coming storm, the wind picks up, and I wrap my shawl tightly around me. I am not cold yet, but that shall arrive soon enough. Cold and wet are in my future. That is one security I can be assured of.

It is a horrible prison, the bagne of Toulon. Would that they could have sent him to Nice––to Nîmes––to Brest. They are all terrible, but Toulon is the worst-well, the most infamous. Its dirty white walls rise before me, a monster of stone and grating––the dirt and the shame nothing beside the confinement. I knock at the gate.

Le Veau. Thank God. It is Lucien le Veau who answers. I will be able to see my husband tonight.

"Monsieur," I say, "Five francs to grant me entry." It is a lot. He could hardly do better if he were to catch some poor prisoner in his flight within the prison's vicinity and reap the reward.

His fist closes over the bribe. "Nice doing business with you again, Madame Février. Or is it Leroy? Joly? Jeunet? Are you Jeunet's wife?"

"Javert," I remind him. In the beginning, in the months after I'd settled in the town after following his _cordon_, I had been afraid of getting him in trouble, but in time I realized that le Veau was a guard I could depend on, as long as my pockets were lined. But how long, O God, before he lets me in for free, like the whores he and his comrades feast on three times a month?

"Welcome to my humble lockup, milady," he says, pocketing the fiver piece and ushering me in.

The wind is rising. The outer courtyard of the prison is open, and a carpet of raindrops slowly begins to pattern itself upon the pavement. The breath of the wind curtains the rain, and I hear the water start to whistle in my ears. Lucien unlocks the outer door and ushers me in. Then he nods at me and goes back to his post.

I know my way in. The halls in this wing are deserted, and I know how to get to the dormitory corridor without meeting any _argousins_ along the way. When I arrive at the mouth of the hall. I peer around the corner. The _garde-chiourme_ is there, at the door to the common sleeping quarters; they are all inside in the darkness after lights out. I drape my shawl in the most matronly way possible, and make sure my rucksack is hidden underneath the portion that drapes down my back. My _nécessaire_ can't help my husband––he could get his own files and saws if that were what he needed––but I don't want them taking it.

There is one more preparation. I take a small stiletto from my rucksack and secret it in the scarf hidden in my bosom, before removing the louis to present it to the _garde-chiourme._

I reveal myself. He looks at me in silent astonishment for a moment, and while he is still silent I press the louis into his palm.

"Take me to my husband, monsieur. One hour is all I ask."

He looks calculatingly at the gold coin. "One hour," he says. "But I am not responsible for anything that happens to you in there. If anyone finds out you are here, I lose my job, do you understand?

I grease his palm further with fifteen sous. "Come in," he says, and shadows lengthen on the floor as he opens the door.

They are young and younger, old and older. They all look the same age in the dark, a mass of penned men, but in the daylight I have seen youths of seventeen––and men of sixty. The room is thick with the suffering rustle of convicts trying to sleep on bare wooden boards and the incessant noise of chains that follows their movements. The Mediterranean air would normally be stifling in what would usually be the heat of the night, but tonight, mercifully, the breeze and the sound of what will soon be torrential rain drifts in through the narrow, high barred windows in a light spray, along with the outside light that spills onto the bare floor and illuminates the sprawled forms of galley-slaves, their red or green caps bunched under their heads as pillows and their scarlet coats drawn around their bodies as the only bedding they have. At the extremity of the yawning chasm that is the dormitory, more light issues from a number of gun-loopholes in the wall––just a constellation of gleaming pinpricks from where I stand.

There are hundreds of men in this room. Ravenous, lustful, dangerous, but chained to their beds, they are like caged tigers; I am safe only if I keep my distance from the range of their claws and their teeth. As I advance I hear panting and whistles, and I reach inside my chemise and clutch the knife through my scarf. The occasional articulated lewd remark gives way to the threats of those who want to protect my honor, to keep me to themselves, to defend the interests of my husband, to keep my presence a secret. I thank the male voices from the dark that come to my aid.

My husband is number 43457. He is on the right-hand side, and his bed is directly under a ventilation window. I call to him. He hears me through the whispering and the fighting and he answers. I locate him in the dark. He is sitting on the edge of his plank bed. They must not have not shorn his head for some time, for his dark hair is radiant in thorny spires upon his crown; the light from the _soupirail_ falls over his face, and his greyish-brown eyes catch the meager moon-glow like a cat's, while every hair in his stark brown eyebrows, in his long effeminate lashes, is illuminated. His red cap, with its tin label of _Travaux forcés _and his number, sags rakishly onto his shoulder. He wears the crimson frock like a soldier over his habit of yellow drab. He is my king, my harlequin prince. I see all this in an instant. We only have one hour.

"Marcel," I cry, and find his arms. I hug him tight, and he wraps his arms about me, breathing into my cheek, his wrists on my neck, his fingers caressing my hair.

"So often, Fifi, I dream about you," he murmurs in my ear. "I think of you. I dream we have a child––children. And I wake up––here. I never forget," he says bitterly, "that we are not free."

I lean back and look into his eyes. I do not know if he is being sincere or not. Marcel lies sometimes. But he is right about one thing. We are not free. I pull him forward and plant a kiss on his lips. I love those lips. They are too tender. They are abused. Marcel does not excel at any trade. Marcel is at the _grande fatigue_, working at the quarry tethered to a greencap ex-cloth merchant from Arras. The merchant is here for life. Marcel has only ten years.

He heaves himself onto the board with a jangle of iron, me upon him. I slip my hand inside his shirt and feel him all around. I make my way up to his shoulder. Drawn always to where he is wounded, my fingers touch the place where the skin is different, the place where I know he is branded with the letters GAL. _Galérien—_a word that declares his status as rent-out slave whose lease is a decade. That is what the state has made him––a slave. But that is not what he is, my Marcel, my thief Fool king. I roll over, and he climbs atop me, and we make love as all the other souls in hell groan around us.


	2. Marcel

I didn't expect her to come tonight. It's not that she can exactly send word, of course––but I normally have a sense of when I will be entertaining a skirt in this fucking ship's hold of frustration, and tonight was not, for some reason or another, a night of anticipation. Maybe it was the tiredness. Maybe I simply_ forgot_ to anticipate her tonight; perhaps my senses were dulled, my feelers down...I had just been about to drop off to sleep when I heard her voice. I thought I was dreaming. It was easy to go to sleep tonight, with the cool and the rain, but it was easy to wake up too. The coming and going was eased, the slipping in and out of consciousness smoothed, by the extraordinary thinness the air has when its stagnant heat and sweat-heaviness is cut with a little change and a little breath. We all need to breathe now and again; there is a shortage of air, here in the bagne. We suffocate.

When I saw her coming, my first thought, to tell you the truth, was, "Well,_ this_ makes the day all worth it." Thibault paid me twelve francs to hold his file last week, you see; I_ thought_ it was easy money, but they found it today. It's a twofer––I was caught not only with that damn silly file, but with a sum of more than ten francs to boot, so I'm next in line to have that sadistic son of a bitch Franck le Bourreau dust off my shoulders. I had been just about ready to consign this latest catastrophe to the great empty vat of meaninglessness I discovered the day they riveted the travelling-collar around my neck. Oh that day, what utter despair that was. I'd had all night to think about it, too, because I couldn't get a damn bit of sleep, with them singing that song all night. You know the one:

_The chain,  
____It's a drag;__  
__But it's all right,__  
__It doesn't bite._

_Our vesture is bright red,__  
__Quite garish to the eye,__  
__We wear__ stocking-caps upon our heads,  
We haven't got a tie.  
For ourselves we'd be wrong to feel sorry,  
We are children most terribly spoiled  
And it's 'cause they're afraid they may lose us  
That in these strong chains we are coiled.  
_

_We'll make some lovely bagatelles  
In straw and in flax,  
Which our shops shall hawk and sell_  
_Without having to pay tax.__  
__Those who visit our junior Navy__  
__Cannot look but they will buy it__  
__And with this extra gravy__  
__We shall supplement our diet._

_When the time to chow down rolls around,__  
__First course, of course, is beans!__  
__It isn't good, but it goes down__  
__Just like the best cuisine.__  
__Our lot would be much more dim__  
__If, like some other fine vets,__  
__They made us go get a trim__  
__At the Abbey what's on Mount Regret._

I'd sung it on the road myself, of course, and then again just before we ate––that's always cause for excitement––but two or three lags would just not shut their faces even after we'd bunked down in the barn. They were really kind of stupid, honestly. The infuriating thing, I mean, was that I was the only one really bothered by it. I'm a light sleeper, I confess it. When I got rained on a bit in the courtyard while they were hammering iron onto my person as though I were some kind of horse, the first thing that occurred to me was how bloody difficult it was going to be to sleep in wet clothes while wearing a yoke.  
Fifika was there, like an exceedingly terrestrial guardian angel. Oh, not at Bicêtre––as if they'd let a gypsy come in to watch the _ferrage,_ to say nothing of the fact that I didn't want her to see me like that (I was not thinking ahead), which was the real reason. But she hovered in the vicinity of the _cadène_ for the first two or three _étapes_ before finally falling behind and arriving in Toulon a good week after we'd installed ourselves in our digs here.

She's lying here right now, for all the world like a bride couched in domestic bliss, with her arm hooked around my shoulder and her head on my chest. Her breasts are partially on display, and I can't tell whether the sight is more gratifying or more cruel for the others. Probably more of the latter. I think the fact that she's mine makes it worse for them. It's just too much. They never get used to it––and frankly, neither do I, not of the novelty of the thing, at any rate. Have you ever bedded someone while in a hall in a room full of involuntary celibates? You should try it sometime. Forced celibacy, now there's something else we and priests have in common, besides the cassock. _Ma foi_, perhaps it's a good thing that the two fellows getting the biggest eyeful, Jacques and Émile, are effeminates––_real_ queers, not just prison queers like Félix Molyneux and Jules Broussard and countless other knights of the garland I really don't care to mention.

"Maybe we_ will_ have a child," Fifika says. This is pillow talk without a pillow. We are lying together under my coat of prison livery, my jacket spread out over us both and my cap somewhere on or near our bodies. Ah, here it is. It was under my left shoulder blade.

"While I'm in here?" I rejoin, wondering how long she and the baby would last. "But you're all alone in this bloody berg, Fifi...now, if I were back on the outside, and if my all my contacts hadn't split up and scarpered, it might be different."

"If there were just something I could do to help you get out of here..." she begins.

"Not at this stage,_ chérie_, but I'm working on it. I'm trying to learn a trade express so's I can get myself in the_ petite fatigue._ It'd be a lot easier to abscond with myself if I were in the half-chain, I'm telling you."

"Trade? You have a trade."

"Yes, darling, but it's not very useful to them."

"I could teach you fortune-telling," she says absurdly, and smiles.

I palm her breast underneath the coat. "Ah yes? Yes, I can just see it. 'Get up, Jean, I want to walk for a bit.' 'No.' 'Yes.' 'No.' 'Yes.' 'NO! I want to sleep, you son of a bitch!' 'Let's play for it.' 'All right.' And I take out your gypsy cards. '_This_ one means..."

Abruptly shifting the scene as is characteristic of her, she touches my hair and says delightedly, "It's longer."

I hadn't really noticed it until she pointed it out, but they_ have_ let it go, haven't they? I wonder when they'll crop it up. Probably while I'm in hospital after my visit to Franck. I really can't think about that right now. No one has the right to make me think about that right now, not when I'm enjoying my marriage bed. I tell you, when I heard her voice, I really thought I was dreaming. It was only when she came up to the window that I realized I was awake.

And now it's over. She has to go. The_ garde-chiourme_ has come to the door. It's wrong that I can't follow her and fuck her again. I revest myself in my jacket, I slip my left leg into my trousers like a free man and then button over my fetters on the right, I even pull on my cap. "Hold _on_, will you?" I growl to the guard.

"Do you want _another_ bastonnade?" he shouts.

I ignore him and embrace my wife. "Goodbye, Fifika," I say. "Till the rain comes again."

_A/N: Watch me fail at translating verse._


End file.
